2.23.2005

We went to see The Gates over the weekend, and I have to say that I just don't get it. I mean, on an intellectual level I understand the man re-creating nature thing, and all that stuff, but as an art experience, it was pretty lame. Maybe it has to do with my frame of mind lately. SK and I have been living for 2 weeks out of our bedroom as they rebuild our lower level (see below for the story of our home disaster). We've literally been going stir crazy and we were really looking forward to getting outside and being in the park and experience some space. But of course, being Saturday, and being that the exhibit is only there until this weekend, the park was crawling with people. It was almost too difficult to experience the art because there were so many people that it was over stimulation. Plus I am crowd-claustrophobic, so it was not very pleasant. Perhaps that was the whole point. To put us in a public space with all of these people who were there for the singular purpose of the experience, albeit as bizarre as it was. They were pretty ugly, those gates.

We did see Mary Tyler Moore's hawk though. It was eating a dead pigeon.

Our house is being torn apart. It started the other morning when the ceiling started raining. Thanks to a burst pipe in the ceiling above the living room, the plumber is in the process of tearing our house apart. Not only does the entire ceiling have to come down to get to the pipes, but two walls as well as he is discovering lots of little surprises, such as a tennis-ball-size hole in the bathoom drainage pipe that surprisingly has nothing to do with the leak that started this whole disaster. You know it's bad when the plumber every ten minutes starts swearing and saying "No fucking way."

2.07.2005

Last year, right around this time, I fell victim to two very strange "conditions." The first was a series of extremely painful hives that started on my palms. I woke one night with my hands literally burning and itchy, and it went away after a few minutes. The next morning, it happened again, and throughout the day it would periodically happen. My hands would start itching and then they would turn all red and blotchy and then they would start burning. By the end of the day, it was happening on the soles of my feet as well. Later that night, SK and I were watching TV and talking, and I went up to go to bed and looked in the mirror and I was COVERED with a rash, all over my face. I literally screamed and ran back downstairs, at which point SK started screaming because it literally popped out in the time it took me to walk upstairs. I took a bunch of benadryl, thinking I was having an allergic reaction, and told SK to rush me to the hospital if I stopped breathing during the night. The next morning, the rash was gone, but I was still having the hive thing. For the next week, they got so bad that there were points where I literally had to crawl around the house because the soles of my feet were so painful. It would pop out suddenly and last for about 15 minutes and then just disappear. Went to the doctor, who did blood tests, and basically had no explanation except stress. It eventually went away after I went to my reiki master, who worked her magic on me and banished the evil hives from my body. About a month later, I got a sore throat on one side of my neck, which traveled up into my ear and eventually started creeping up my scalp. Eventually my whole head on one side was sore, not a pain like a headhache, but a soreness like a bruise. It only hurt when I put pressure on the skin. Very bizarre. It was actually unpleasant to take a shower because every drop of water on my head was like poking a bruise. Again, back to the doctor, who gave me antibiotics and sent me on my way. A week later, nothing was getting better. Long story short, the pain remained for another 3 weeks. It got to the point where I couldn't tell if I was getting better or just accustomed to living with the pain. I went on three courses of antibiotics and steroids, each one stronger than the last until the last group was so strong that they literally got me high. The only explanation the doctor had was that my sinuses had gotten infected and swollen and were not draining the fluid that was accumulating in my head. That was so not an explanation I was willing to get behind, picturing all of those swollen-headed encephylitis babies, but it was better than brain cancer, I suppose. Eventually, this went away as well, but not after literally a month of uncertainty and the feeling that there was something seriously wrong with my brain.

So why am I telling all of this? Because my head is starting to feel that same numb/sore feeling that I had, and no amounts of tylenol are making it go away. So far, no hives though.